The Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT) launched the National Education Policy Framework (NEPF) on the completion of hundred days of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in government.

The NEPF will be initiating in the capital by the enrollment of the OSC in a ceremony held here.

Earlier the ministry had vowed to take the enrollment of children in school up to 100percent.

In a presentation, Joint Education Advisor (JEA) Dr. Rafique Tahir said that the city has around 27300 OSC. The ministry has formed a forum to bring the OSC to the institutions providing formal and informal education.

The departments include Basic Education Community Schools (BECS), NCHD and private organization will be also the part of the forum to facilitate in achieving this goal.

Dr. Rafique Tahir said that the target of bringing all estimated OSC will be achieved in five steps, while the implementation of the plan will begin from (today).

In the first step, the ministry and its department will identify the number of OSC in different sectors of the city. After the identification of the child, a nearby school will be selected for him in the relevant sector.

He said that the community mobilization will be started to get the proper number of OSC in different sectors and convince the parents to send their children to schools.

He added that the ministry will form an enrollment mechanism to keep the record of right number of OSC and the last step will be to form a strategy to retain the enrolled children in schools.

Six children named Ayesha Bibi from Rawat, Abbas Hassan from Shah Allah Ditta, Zahid Hussain, Ashish from sector G-7/2, Yasir Abbas from Neelor and Zabdi Babar were enrolled in different educational institutions in the federal capital

Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mehmood on the occasion said that ministry has set a target of decreasing the number of Out of School Children introducing uniformity in education sector, improving the quality of education and enhance access to relevance and encouraging skill training for youth in the country.

“The population is increasing and literacy rate is decreasing in the country,” he said.

Minister said that the estimates show that more than 20million children in country are out of school and 41 percent rate of the dropout is at primary level.

He said that above 65million children between the ages of 5-9, 65 million between 10-12, 10million between 13 to 16 years of age are out of school in the country.

He said the overall estimate shows that the number of out of school girls is higher than boys which are above 12million.

The minister said that the country has scattered education system and the government has decided to follow the policy to implement uniform education system in public, private institutes and madrassahs.

“National Curriculum Council has been established to bring all the stakeholders on same page for implementing the uniform curriculum,” he said.

Minister said that there is no resistance for uniform education from the Madrassa education system and in fact they have welcomed the reforms presented by the government.

Minister also said that the quality standards of the education from primary to degree level are not impressive and it is a dire need to improve the standards of the education at all levels. He said that the ministry will establish a skill university in the capital to encourage the skill education and will relate it with the market that the graduates can utilize their education.

About the school education the capital, minister said that evening shifts will be started and underutilized buildings will utilized for the provision of the education in the city.